Visegrad Conference V4DIS 2014

4/9/2014, Praha, Česky

Yesterday afternoon in Hradec Králové in the Aldis Congress Centre there finished the 17^th year of the conference ISSS/V4DIS – one of the biggest events focused on informatization and reform of public administration in the whole Central and Eastern European region. Meeting of public administration representatives from Visegrad countries was part of this renowned event already for the 11^th time. The auspices of the conference were granted by the Prime Minister of CR Bohuslav Sobotka, Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Bělobrádek, Minister of the Interior Milan Chovanec, Minister for Regional Development Věra Jourová and Association of Regions of CR. The Visegrad conference V4DIS was granted personal auspices by the Vice President of the Senate of the Parliament of CR Přemysl Sobotka. Among very important guests there also appeared the Vice President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes and the Vice President of the European Parliament Oldřich Vlasák, the meeting was participated also by the director of the International Visegrad Fund (IVF) Karla Wurster. Besides the Association Czech At it was also the Vysočina Region that took a significant share in the organization of the conference.

“Support of information and communication technologies has been an important development priority for the Vysočina Region already since its establishment. That is also why we regularly take part in preparation and organization of the conference of public administration representatives from the countries of the Visegrad four V4DIS,” remarked the president of Vysočina Region Jiří Běhounek. It was him who appeared in the chair during the gala opening beside the senator Miloš Vystrčil, the general secretary of the Union of Towns and Cities of Slovakia Marian Minarovič and the director of the conference ISSS/V4DIS Tomáš Renčín.

This year traditional meeting of public administration representatives of the Visegrad countries focused especially on the current state of eGovernment in the whole V4 region. The speeches delivered during the conference meeting included also view of an independent analytic company IDC CEMA and there did not lack discussions about results of the large project LDA V4 that in the course of the past two years mapped the state of informatization of public administration in the whole region. Its carrier was Vysočina Region and it was participated by a number of partners from all Visegrad countries. However there were also delivered interesting speeches and presentations from the guests from V4 countries in the course of the whole two-day programme of the ISSS/V4DIS conference – among others there were presented information about programme equipment for building authorities in Slovakia VITA software), a presentation by Professor Andrzej Janicki from Polish Alfa Omega Foundation “Highly Integrated E-governance Systems – a way to leverage V4+ common power”, a presentation of the results of analytic institute IDC CEMA “Standing together: IT, citizens, and government in the V4”, best-practices of Slovakian towns Bratislava, Prešov or Turčianské Teplice, examples of best practices from Great Britain, Denmark and Poland (Trudy Norris-Grey from Microsoft CEE) or a presentation of the project “ovce.sk”, which got an international award World Summit Award 2013.

Traditionally the conference V4DIS 2014 also presented activities of young, talented people who take an active part in administration of public matters and through the competition Junior Erb (Junior Crest) they compare their own projects and exchange valuable experience. Moreover this year the awarded competitors have met the Vice President of European Commission and the Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes. This year competition results can be found on www.isss.cz. Representatives of V4 public administration or more precisely of the Czech town Úštěk, Slovakian Banská Bystrica and Polish Kolobrzeg took over awards given within the traditional competition EuroCrest.